Aaptiv wanted its bike-locker key back.
There were also some things on my desk. I asked for a photo so I could decide what I wanted and what they could throw away. I had not been in the office for months. I was not going back to collect any of it myself.
The key was the easy part. I just needed an address.
I was living in Poughkeepsie by then. When a recruiter reached out about a CTO search in New York City, I gave him the short version: “Primarily due to COVID, I am actually living upstate for the time being and not looking to return to work in the city.”
He asked where upstate. I told him.
“I've had an old house up here for years finally going to good use.”
That was true, although “good use” still involved a lot of ladders, leaks, lumber, and mess. The porch roof was open. Part of the ceiling had come down. Amanda, Eva, and I had left the Brooklyn apartment, and a move that started as temporary was getting harder to describe that way.
I thought we would be upstate for at least another two months. Beyond that, I did not know. I was still willing to hear about the CTO role if the timing worked. I just was not planning my life around getting back into a Manhattan office.
Work had already moved somewhere else. A former Aaptiv colleague was researching tools for remote workers and managers, and I connected him with someone at InVision. The two of us were still doing what we always did, continually scheming on product and business ideas. Now the subject was the problem everybody had at once: how to work when nobody was in the same place.
Aaptiv had once meant an office, a desk, and a bike locker. Now it was a key I needed to put in the mail and a photo of whatever I had left behind.
I was waiting for the address.